This is a very useful book, especially given the urgency with which we need to engage in finding solutions against violence and inequality in the present times. Violence has increasingly become a problem in urban areas in Britain as well as in Caribbean countries such as Trinidad, Jamaica and Guyana. This book shows that the political calypso is an art form that has created a space where violence and inequality is problematised, and thereby transformed. This function has positive implications for social and even legal processes, argues Phillips, by showing that this art form is, in fact, a form of informal alternative dispute resolution (ADR). With this, it offers a creative healing space for communication, consciousness-raising and healing – and thereby acts as a ‘theatre of emancipation’. The original context and conflict was of course that of enslavement … read more

A fuller version of this review will be published in the Journal of Self and Society. If you are interested in buying a copy of The Political Calypso – A Sociolinguistic Process of Conflict Transformation, please email Ursula Troche at: ursulatroche@yahoo.co.uk